Maru's Mun Journal

About a month ago, I went on a road trip with my mother, to visit some places where we'd used to live, and then see the exhibition about the Varus battle at Kalkriese. First, we went to Gevelsberg, where we used to live until I was six, and where my grandmother lived until 1998; via the former Cistercian monastery known as 'Altenberger Dom', which is  a popular destination not too far away.

( So, without further ado, to the pictures! )

I think it's really sweet how they're holding paws...

( More randomness from my phone camera )

... and that means that all and sundry think they have the right to call her on the phone from quarter to nine in the morning onwards, nonstop, one after the other, and hog her attention and keep her away from her morning coffee.

If that is what being popular in RL means, I'm glad that it's generally accepted that I'm a snarky misanthropic bastard with a temper shorter than the attention span of a butterfly on crack. It would be infinitely infuriating to have one's attention taken hostage in this manner!!

The Little Lady is something less of a trouper today; she chafes, screamed blue murder all afternoon, and terrorized everybody. The plaster cast is getting on her nerves. The result: endless kiddie TV, on the tube or on video. Tomorrow, my mother is going to drag her to doctors and rent a wheelchair to push her around. At least, that is activity, and Phia will be too afraid to be much of a pest.

In other news: essayel , that little violet-blue stone with the smile has been identified. There was a little mineral shop at the place where we stopped for a break yesterday, on our way back from the Baltic, and they sold things made of that material. It is  blue goldstone, the one traditional artificial material that does equal a natural gemstone in hardness and workability. That reminds me of silima, the stuff Feanor made his gems from, in the Silmarillion. Hey, you gave me - not only a pretty stone that reminds one of asar_suti  (the colour) and gil_whimple  (the little smile), but that might be made of the same stuff as a palantír.



Also, esoteric lore ascribes various healing properties. Strong ones. That stone is magic.

And the Little Lady always wants to see the smile when I wear it...

Little Lady has torn a ligament. No OOMs till Saturday, and then I'm back online early. Sorry.

Hmmmmm.

It seems I acquired another nephew today, by the name of Fynn.

My sister chose an Irish name. How very pretty. I approve.

( Click only if you don't mind seeing ugly red tiny newborn humans )

My mother and the Little Lady are going to visit me in about two weeks - whee!!

I shall take pictures of the Little Lady with Svava the kitten, and the cute will instantly be fatal to everybody.

I shall have to arrange plot at miliways_bar around that visit, but on the pro side, I can watch 'Neverending Story' with the Little Lady, and get ideas for _fuchur_

And we can go to Bavaria Filmtours again, and I shall have pics of Phia riding Falkor, which will be even more fatally cute. Fortresses were laid low by lesser forces than the squee that is going to generate...

( Thoughts on HBP )

Nah, not my personal drama. I don't really do drama. I sometimes worry about other people's drama, but really, I prefer to have the stuff at the Crackbar, where it belongs, instead of in RL.

It's just the dramatic old stories that my parents told me over breakfast about one branch of our family, my last surviving grand-uncle and his descendants.

We are all very tame; all the drama, tragedy, soap opera and general mayhem centers on that one branch. Which is quite leafy. And knotty and gnarly, to keep with the tree metaphor.

Really, it's the sort of thing you expect at the Crackbar, in South American Telenovelas, in modern epics taking place in Savannah or New Orleans, or perhaps among the Cheysuli and Ihlini. Definitely lurid, angsty, painful, squicky and (for an outsider) almost entertaining. I don't think I should tell the actual stories as they're probably just as banal to read as they must have been painful to live through, but suffice it to say, Tynstar, Strahan and Lochiel are comparatively harmless compared to that self-centred old man. I was aghast, and amused in a very odd, surreal way.-

In other news: I did not manage to buy anything not black or purple today when shopping with my mother. I got black trousers, and a beautiful dark violet flared velvet shirt. Erm. And then we went to buy sweater-and-cardigan sets for my mother, and one of them is black, to offset the wonderful miniature replica of the Nebra Sky Disc that my mother's best friend had given her for Christmas, and then she wanted to get herself another one and of course she asked me which colour I thought was best, and of course I advised he to buy the violet heather-coloured turtle-necked set, and of course she did...



So we both came back with black and purkle clothes. Character bleed gets dangerous when it starts touching innocent people. ..

I'm in Berlin. I'm sitting at my own beloved little foldup ccomputer, at my aunt's dialup computer, with my Little Lady drawing with my old coloured pencils beside me, as I have a large new box of them (Wheee!!) from the relative who works for the company that makes them - as the old ones were made from slightly faulty wood that splinters when you sharpen them, but in any case good enough for the Little Lady...

And really need to review "The Deep End" for Areion, as my bi-weekly DVD review is overdue since yesterday. As there has to be one, I can just as well review one with pretty, pretty Goran Visnjic in.

And while I do that, I will still be available. After that? My Monday morning, hopefully, if everything works out all right with Sphinx' WLAN.

And then I will make some inaugural drawing from the new box of coloured pencils. If it's any good, I'll put it on Sphinx' scanner on Monday.

So, now I'm really off to the Internet free zone. I might get online tomorrow morning for a few minutes before we start, but on the other hand, I might get laden down with ten bags while still asleep and unceremoniously shooed to the car, as people are threatening to start at five in the morning.

So I will try to get online at times, but if not, you will hear from me in two weeks' time, sort of. If anybody needs anything from my characters in the discworld_rpg or in the AU, just go ahead and NPC them along. I'll deal with or react to it whenever I manage to get online again. But if you need anything from Margo, Tepp, Lajos or Beth, don't hesitate to say they've done so.

And I won't forget the postcard for woelfle, which won't have far to travel anyway.